


chamber of reflections.

by teethrotter



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Body Horror, Gen, Ghosts, Immortality, Misogyny, Omnipotence, Psychological Torture, Torture, based off of ihnmaims
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21965860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teethrotter/pseuds/teethrotter
Summary: It always began the same - the other seven were comfortably within range, able to be drawn in and tucked beneath his thumb. Then, they weren't. No warning, no transitional phases. They simply vanished into the arid, electrified, stagnant air surrounding them. Hatori was fond of individualized tortures, after all.This time was only marginally different.
Relationships: Takahashi Eiichi & Masahiko Kida
Kudos: 2





	chamber of reflections.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jockohomo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jockohomo/gifts).



> yet another incredibly specific gift work from me, this time for an au that my partner already wrote about ! my apologies :)
> 
> to somewhat acquaint anybody unfamiliar with this niche au: the plot follows that of the original 'i have no mouth and i must scream'. the difference is the characters, since everything i touch inevitably becomes some au focused on the yotsuba group. hatori is a vengeful spirit who somehow managed to infiltrate am's system and take control of the computer, using its abilities to execute his revenge after destroying the world. the remaining seven unwillingly undergo transformations that tend to define the majority of their character, just as the core group in the original. the significant ones here are takahashi and kida, the former being made to be highly irritable and given an inarguable position of leadership while the latter is blinded, prone to bouts of paralysis, and unable to experience any form of physicality without severely injuring those who attempt to initiate it ( i.e. burning layers of skin instantaneously upon contact ). hatori is fond of individualized plights. 
> 
> obviously, some additional liberties were taken from the original, as this is not a direct ihnmaims fic. hopefully the rest can vaguely explain itself from here.

Despite the regularity with which these events occurred, Takahashi still found himself disoriented whenever he turned around to find that the others had vanished, the world as it had been only seconds ago completely replaced by weightless obsidian.

Though he did all he could to conceal his fear, it was primal, almost carnal. Hatori was omniscient, all-powerful, his vessel filled to the brim with hatred. Takahashi had unquestionably received the most mercy out of any of them. It is only logical that he dreads any direct attention from their deity, lying in wait for his _real_ punishment.

Hatori, for all his unpredictable tricks, did follow one trend of monotony: the scenery. Yes, he would craft his boundless body into whatever hellish landscape he deduced would best fit the agony he had in mind, but he tended to stick with a setting for some time once he’d selected one.

Currently, a desert stretches to the horizon. It is tinged deep crimson, almost totally dark, unfathomable portions of metal spread throughout ( perhaps to remind them all of the limitless capabilities of Hatori’s prison ). It resembles the surface of the moon in texture and barrenness. He’d certainly been more fanciful in the past; the desolation was almost a blessing in the face of years upon years of horror, of oceans filled with rot and pus and storms unlike anything else the Earth had ever seen. There had been no water for weeks, no food for even longer, each of their bodies kept alive by some unknown force Hatori refused to address. They were weak, dehydrated, petulant, desperate.

Takahashi had just been thinking of how much he would give to see snow one last time. Snow would come when Hatori willed it, used exclusively as a tool to instigate frostbite and misery, to make them all feel like they were approaching the brink of death. He wanted to see _actual_ snow again, the kind from his childhood that brought only numbness to his toes, his thighs, his fingers, his cheeks. He was so very weary of the desiccated landscape composed of rust and neglected machinery, a film of airborne soil and radioactive fallout the only indication that organic life had ever existed.

_Eiichi._

Hatori never spoke, not physically: he couldn’t with this body. Instead, his voice came in the form of some internal signal fed directly into each of their minds, impossible to block out or ignore. It sounded quite like an amalgamation of clicks and hums and clinking technology, but he somehow managed to make the series of sounds decipherable to human understanding. Undoubtedly just to further the plight of them all.

“Get out of my head.”

As if he wasn’t always embedded somewhere between layers of their mortal brain tissue. As if he didn’t have the ability to make Takahashi’s miserable existence a hell beyond his wildest imagination with nothing more than a passing thought. As if Takahashi ever had even a fraction of the control he pretended to.

Takahashi could feel the machine’s cold claws pricking along the pinpoints of his neurons, an indescribable sensation that he could just barely turn a brave face to anymore.

_Oh, don’t be like that. You’re always so stubborn, so big and brave when it matters the least. You can be scared in front of me. There’s no use hiding it. I can feel it, right here._

A pinch to his amygdala. Takahashi’s eye twitches involuntarily at the sensation, his hands reflexively moving to clamp around his skull.

“Stop it. You made me this way. If you don’t like it, just make me into something else.”

Hatori laughs, a screeching and shrill squeal of metal that threatened to burst Takahashi’s eardrums.

 _I could never! You’re the only one who even_ tries _to resist me anymore. I tell Suguru to jump, he’s already over the sun before he can ask ‘how high?’. Reiji and Takeshi are both useless. Kyosuke’s amusing, but he doesn’t know how to do anything but beg whenever he’s alone for more than a few seconds. Ayame’s obvious. How is she, by the way? Is her new body still living up to your standards?_

Takahashi is accustomed to Hatori’s antics by now, immediately latching onto the sole discrepancy in his description; that was the only way to even begin to predict what his next course of action would be. Wasting time by allowing himself to fall for his temptations was not an option.

“Masahiko. You didn’t say anything about Masahiko.”

“Eiichi?” Kida’s voice answers, somewhere in the darkness to his right.

Takahashi quickly removes his hands from his skull, eyes all but rolling about in their sockets. He was certain that Kida had not been there in the moments before, but that hardly mattered now. He needed to find him before Hatori conceived some way to use Kida’s harmful attributes against him.

The darkness was thick, almost tangible. Takahashi was further disturbed by the weightlessness of his body. Nonetheless, he gropes blindly in the space around him, calling the other man’s name.

Hatori rarely had them do this in pairs. Participation in these types of trials tended to be either individual or collective. Any more or any less than that implied something unique, foul.

Before he can formulate a single thought, Takahashi is snapping.

“Masahiko! Where are you? I know for a fact you’re not gonna be able to find me on your own. I can’t even touch you, damn it, it’s too dark for me to fucking see - “

Hatori laughs again, thunderous and horrible, goading Takahashi to stop briefly to pin his hands over his ears ( something that never offered any relief ).

 _You’re too easy, Eiichi. Where’s all that bravado you show to everybody else? Am I so special that I get to see the_ real _you? Sweet, silly boy. If you want Masahiko so badly, here he is._

Without warning, Kida’s body physically drops from Eiichi’s right, directly into his searching arms. He involuntarily gasps in agony as the first layers of skin slough off, numbly wrenching his hands back to his chest as the body collapses. These were hardly the worst burns he’d received or observed from Kida’s touch alone.

Hatori’s horrid shrieks grind against the bones in his ear, his eyes squinting narrowly in protest, but he is still this time. Kida is pulling himself up onto his forearms, groaning quietly in discontent.

“Eiichi? Is it only you? I don’t hear anyone else – “

“Don’t move, Masahiko. Fuck. You’ve already taken out most of my arms. Don’t cause any more damage than you already have.”

Kida inhales, apparently to retort. Before he can, the lifeless ground begins to undulate, consequently setting him off balance. Takahashi jolts, reflexively drifting as close to Kida as possible, keeping well away from physicality.

The dry soil splits in an earsplitting series of screams. A chasm yawns where the crackling began, bottomless and imposing. Takahashi glances about feverishly – there is nowhere else to go but down, the crevice stretching as far as his eyes can see in each direction. It was wholly unnatural, but he’d learned that the world no longer bowed to the constraints of physics or mathematics.

“Eiichi, what the _hell_ is going on?!”

Snapped out of his reverie, Takahashi plants himself down heavily onto his ass, sighing irritably. Kida seems to sense the motion, dragging himself in the other man’s general direction. His lower half remains paralyzed, judging by his current range of motion.

“Shut up and calm down. Hatori changed the landscape again. Kind of. It’s the same, but now there’s a god damn bottomless pit. It’s the only place for us to go. Fuck.”

Hatori’s extended silence only fuels Takahashi’s apprehension: nothing good ever comes of it.

“Is there no way around it? Where are the others?” Mashakio inquires, his tone forcedly light, wary.

“Not that I can see. I have no idea. We’re the only ones here. Damn it, Hatori, I’ll fucking send you to hell myself, come out and – “

Snow whirls in sheets, abruptly bringing stark white into the blackened world. It’s a blizzard unlike any they had ever seen, layers upon layers of snow simply folding in blankets from the maroon sky. Countless flakes of ice reflect the red of their surroundings, coloring them a macabre crimson. The pit is their only source of refuge. Takahashi curses.

“We have to go into the pit. There’s no other choice. Just crawl forward. You’ll fall.”

Kida stammers in protest, but Takahashi has already vanished, his body locked in a freefall.

Taking the howling wind and the biting chill as evidence of his absence, Kida tentatively inches forward, hands feeling blindly for the covered edge of the chasm. He initially struggles to find it, only barely silencing the panic rising in his throat. Eventually, his tremulous, bitter, weak fingers grip the pit’s opening, hesitating for a single moment before decidedly shoving himself down into its depths.

He falls for what feels to be several eternities. Time has always flowed strangely ever since Hatori bombed much of the planet, but Kida feels as if he’s passed the center of the Earth and entered the opposite side.

When his body crashes, it crashes hard, effectively crushed over a surface far too sharp to be anything natural. The air is knocked from Kida’s lungs upon impact, his body involuntarily rolling, not even allowing him the chance to scream as a twisted spire of metal pierces through his abdomen. His dull eyes widen almost comically.

Gravity ravages him, some invisible force tugging his body down at an angle. The tower catches against his lumbar vertebrae, his lungs quivering as its point bursts through his skin and bone, falling farther still. Its girth coerces a nauseating, searing bubble of blood, veins, and organs up his throat, expelled from his mouth in a rush before he can think to stop himself. He has been nearly disemboweled, eviscerated by his own vomit, pounding heart and futile lungs the sole structures to escape the spire’s destruction. He inhales and his lips gape, emitting weak peals of whistles as he was impaled deeper, Hatori’s crooked body curving mercilessly up into his flesh.

Takahashi’s voice howls nearby. Kida grips the spire where it enters his stomach, his hands practically vibrating as he breaks into cold, dripping sweat. His weight pushes him downwards, every muscle straining against the pull of gravity, but he manages to halt his descent down the jagged crag.

Somewhere beneath him, he finally hears the wet plop of his blood and abdominal organs impacting onto the ground.

“ _Eiichi_!” he shrieks, voice high and teetering and _petrified_.

Takahashi thumps and struggles with renewed vigor against the chains scorching his skin, blisters forming and bursting. Blood lubricates his hands, shaking violently and scrabbling at white-hot metal, his bodily fluids hissing as they swiftly evaporated. His arms already having been severely burned once before, he glimpses a peek of white bone once the layers of his muscles have melted away entirely, sparing it as little attention as possible.

After what felt to be eons of silence, Hatori speaks again, patronizing and infuriating.

_You know I won’t let him die. Why are you trying so hard? If you’d just stayed still, you wouldn’t have totally incapacitated yourself. What are you even going to do if you do manage to get free? Touch him? Maybe even carry him without any usable arms?_

The machine laughs, mocking and revelatory. Takahashi ignores the cackling and bites the inside of his cheek so harshly that blood gushes into his mouth, just to give him something else to focus on as his hands practically melt away.

Chains of the same material inexplicably bind about his legs, his middle. He hollers in sheer agony, eyes squeezing closed as his flesh blisters and pops.

Kida’s hands slip on the surface of the spire, made slick with his own blood. It thickens impossibly as the base approaches, dull eyes bugging, throat unable to work around a scream. Jagged metal nicks the tender tissues of his lungs, his torturous descent beginning anew. Tears sting like pokers as they pour from his eyes, intermingling with sweat and blood.

_He may not be able to see you, but he can hear you just fine. Why don’t you reassure him while he’s still conscious, Eiichi? That you’re a big, strong leader, that you’ll find a way to get you all out of here, away from me? Where did all your bravado go?_

Takahashi screeches in fresh excruciation, feeling and smelling rather than seeing his flesh being eaten away by additional bounds. Involuntary tears leap from his eyes, mixing with the sweat drenching his cheeks and hair.

_Here’s the leader, screaming and crying like the little pussy he really is. Is this how you want them all to see you? Weak, washed up, not only unable to save himself but also his charges? Drop the act. You’re nothing more than a faker, a false idea. Better to let them all see it now than for it to come out later when you least expect it to bite you in the ass._

Kida begins to struggle, manually attempting to force his body up toward the tower’s point. He clasps his hands around its entry into his body, inching himself up and off of it bit by bit, sobbing and whistling as his lung punctures.

_Wise up, Eiichi._

**Author's Note:**

> a very happy new year to my dearest partner; for better or for worse, it's only by his influence that i have the confidence to post such self-indulgent items as this. i do hope that this silly thing did this au some justice :)
> 
> if you're interested in this au, please check out yotsu8a's fic about it: A FIG TREE, STRUCK BY LIGHTNING
> 
> thank you for reading !


End file.
